


A mourned thing, a haunting

by Sovin



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Era, Gen, Ghosts, Haunting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-28 19:41:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5103320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sovin/pseuds/Sovin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Feuilly's room may have a ghost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A mourned thing, a haunting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PaintedSarcasm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaintedSarcasm/gifts).



> Consider this the obligatory disclaimer.
> 
> Come say hello over [on tumblr](http://www.sovinly.tumblr.com)!
> 
> For [ PaintedSarcasm](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/PaintedSarcasm/) for the Les Mis Halloween Exchange, based on the prompt "a candle, a window, a haunting." I hope you're alright with a haunting and friendship and my attempts at canon era, since it was a delight to write this for you. Happy Halloween!

The candlelight flickered across the page of Feuilly’s open book, vanishing nearly to darkness before swaying back and then again, almost blown out by a strong gust of wind.

He blinked, marking his line with a finger before he looked up and around, pulled from the brink of his reverie. His candle had burned just past the hour-mark and the moon cast a sliver of silver across his floor.

Reluctantly, Feuilly marked his place and closed his book, tucking it safely away on the table next to his bed for tomorrow. Now that he had stopped, the fatigue rushed over him, sapping his hands and limbs to aching.

Scrubbing at his face, he sighed and made ready to sleep. Another long day of work would come too soon, looming in the awaiting dawn, and every minute of rest was needed. He turned down his covers and gently blew the candle out, standing long and lanky in the heavy shadows.

The evening air was cool, and he went to close the shutters against drafts.

The night was still and flat and calm.

 

\--

 

When Feuilly first took the room, he’d heard whispers of a ghost haunting it. Two other men, they said, had fled the strange occurrences.

Feuilly did not make a habit of believing in ghosts. It hardly mattered what he thought - ghost or no ghost, even rumors of an unfriendly spirit would drive down rent, stretching his three careful franks a day that much farther.

With two months of residence under his belt, Feuilly started to understand what they meant.

He was still unconvinced that it was the work of a spirit, but his apartment was plagued by odd things – cold, items moved from place to place, and moaning that could not be attributed solely to the elderly creaking of an old building. One night, when he fell asleep over his reading, he woke to find the candle neatly blown out, with no wax wasted.

But Feuilly was a busy man and a hard-working one, with little time between his work and Les Amis de l’ABC to worry about strange and minor things.

There were worse housemates by far than an apparition – Courfeyrac’s well intentioned but misguided friend, for one.

 

\--

 

Feuilly returned home to find his book lying open on the table, when he knew for certain that it had been closed. Its pages rustled, turning with a raspy flutter, and then they settled quite suddenly, with the abruptness of naughty children called to task.

He set his bag down and walked over, faintly unsettled like a shiver running the length of his spine.

The book was undamaged, without wrinkle or tear, and he let out a quiet breath of relief, jaw clenching to think of one of his precious few volumes damaged by carelessness. Even his marker had not been moved, still tucked innocuously between pages of political history.

Perhaps he had left it out and open after all, forgetting in his exhaustion to put it away.

The room was quiet and the room was still, with flecks of dust falling silently to the floor in slow, patient spirals, the calamity of Paris outside muted and muffled, and the late afternoon light yellowing everything like ancient papers.

Cold, like fingers of frost, brushed past Feuilly’s temple, and his ear rang like church bells for a dizzying few moments.

Perhaps there was something more, after all.

 

\--

 

He should hardly be surprised that an offhand mention of the peculiar happenings in his room roused the attention of his friends. He was not surprised that, so intrigued, they managed to wrangle out the whole tale from him.

“A ghost would be as good an explanation as any,” Combeferre said, dark eyes bright like flame with curiosity. “We could host a séance, and see if it would communicate with us.”

“No séances,” Feuilly replied, not quite able to bring himself to be severe. “My landlady has no patience or amusement for ventures of that sort.”

Combeferre lifted his hands, conceding, though a touch of wistfulness lingered on his features, ever seeking more information to better understand the universe. To Feuilly, he sometimes seemed abstract, obscure in a way that even Enjolras did not, but Combeferre’s unrelenting enthusiasm to _learn,_ even about the esoteric and impractical, appealed. “No séance. It could just as likely be a strange configuration of buildings creating a directed draft. But I would be much obliged if you would keep me appraised – it has all the hallmarks of a haunting.”

“So it does,” Prouvaire put in, thoughtful, as his fingers played over the rim of his glass. He could wax eloquent when occasion called and the tumult of the café’s back room allowed. “If you do have some spirit, Feuilly, it must have a very tragic tale to tell. Murder or consumptive illness or a life tragically cut short, the sort of thing that draws a person to linger in the land of the living, which they cannot reach but as shadows. Perhaps you should do as the Romans did, and leave an offering to it so that it will lend you good fortune?”

“You’ve been reading too much melancholic poetry, my friend,” Joly replied, cheerful. “It could well be that death is a very boring place to be, and Feuilly’s housemate-in-potentia was a good natured fellow who was not quite ready to give up his humor.”

“Even in such conversations, our friends’ dispositions do not turn to wraith,” Enjolras murmured to Combeferre with affectionate humor, close enough that Feuilly could hear and making him fight down a smile of his own.

Prouvaire looked torn as to how he should reply to Joly’s proposition, but then Bossuet spread his arms in a grand gesture, his grin making him charming.

“Friends,” he declared, “Romans, countrymen! You do yourselves a great disservice to neglect an expert on the subject, as I have, once and in a very convoluted string of events, as my usual luck, made the acquaintance of a spirit, or so it could well be argued!”

Feuilly smiled to himself, pleased enough to settle back in his chair and listen instead, glad for friends willing enough to follow the subject well away from him.

 

\--

 

Sometime in the last few weeks, it became routine for Feuilly to walk through the door and methodically shift things back to their usual places an inch over, right anything that had tumbled over, to stop starting at the eerie, piercing rise-and-fall of noise that seemed to come from the walls.

He folded it seamlessly into his usual routine, now with candles flickering in non-existent breezes, hardly thinking of it as he collapsed, finally, into bed to sleep for a precious few hours.

In his dreams, mist swirled around him, shapeless horrors reached from deep and memoryless rivers. He could not see and his throat grew tight. Skeletal children stretched hungry hands toward him and cold bit his bones bitter. A heavy fog like spring on the Seine dampened everything down to something abstract and eerie. Behind it all, a keening – ageless, genderless, the voice of loss.

An abyss gaped, like a starless sky, between him and something dark and dear and quiet.

When Feuilly woke with the dawn, it was with a start and feeling as though he’d gotten no sleep at all.

Storms rolled in over the city, lashing the cobblestones with vicious rain, but the sill of Feuilly’s window stayed clear and clean. The dreams, formless and exhausting but not fearful, continued.

 

\--

 

“Feuilly!” Bahorel exclaimed, mood as bright as his finely turned waistcoat. “You have been quiet this evening, and have not even roused yourself to draw the conversation to partitions! Do not tell me you are turning melancholy for the night! Play a game of cards with us – Bossuet is wagering his gloves and Joly a round of drinks, both prizes not to be missed!”

Feuilly begged off gently. “I’m in a better mood for contemplation tonight, my friend, but I’ll watch your cards with interest to better best you another night.”

Bahorel let himself be waved off with nothing more than a brief, concerned frown and a heavy hand on Feuilly’s shoulder, but Courfeyrac turned in his chair.

“Is all well with you, Feuilly?” Courfeyrac asked, his fine features gentle in easy worry.

Feuilly smiled, for it was easy to smile at Courfeyrac and his kind liveliness. “All is well with me, but your concern does you credit. I simply prefer to watch, tonight, as my mind is too much elsewhere.”

“As long as it is not so far that you forget your friends,” Courfeyrac chided affably. “Loneliness is a terrible burden when you’re sat among your most affectionate of comrades. If you are so, we’ll do our utmost to cheer you. But if it is silence you ask for, not lack of company, then I believe I’d best go match Joly’s bet!”

Laughing despite himself, Feuilly promised to keep it in mind and shooed Courfeyrac off to the game of cards. More thoughtfully, he leaned back in his chair, reveling in the chaotic chatter.

Feuilly, by now, had more reason to accept that a ghost happened to be haunting his room than not. The problem, of course, being what Feuilly was to _do_ with a ghost.

The answer was still not a séance, as he had the feeling it would be impolitic, no matter Prouvaire and Combeferre’s enthusiasms. Surely the more usual response to a spectre would be to drive it out, to abandon the property, or to seek some weird woman or priest to move it along to divine judgment.

To involve others would draw too much attention to his affairs and cost money Feuilly did not have. He had no desire, likewise, to move, for he was well pleased with his room, its location, and its price. All that was left was to drive it out, and yet –

The cold was inconvenient and the dreams unsettling, but the haunt was harmless for its part. Feuilly’s candles rarely went out entirely, and when they flickered, it seemed to be to draw his attention to the world once more. His shutters blew open sometimes but his window let in no rain, even with the crack across it.

And what, really, was a ghost? A soul poorly trapped between two definitive points of existence, with something unfulfilled in its nature or something left undone in life. All souls, surely, were included in the world, whether living or no.

Feuilly’s dreams, often, brought images of a dark, distant place of rest, some far shore unreachable and uncrossable.

How lonely must it be, to be a ghost, wandering without friend or company.

Surely, if Feuilly took the world for the family he did not have, he should extend his hand to another so downtrodden.

An offering, Prouvaire had said, all that time ago, like the ancient Romans. Not that Feuilly knows what to offer ghosts. Not that Feuilly has much of anything to offer a spirit. Spirits, perhaps – there’s something sacred to wine. The wine of friendship, which had bound him to the brothers here he held so dear to him.

Grantaire, lounging at the next table, slumped forward on his crossed arms, nudging his last mostly-full bottle of wine to the side.

“You should stop for the night,” Feuilly murmured to him, shifting over. Grantaire was far past belligerence tonight, and not quite to melancholy either, and seemed content enough to soak in the atmosphere of the club.

He looked over at Feuilly and his mouth twisted wryly as he snorted.

“Perhaps!” Grantaire twirled his hand absently. “While I hold out hope for a share of Joly or Bossuet’s victory spoils, I’ve grown bored of wine tonight and have no desire to drink deeper of more daring concoctions. Too much more and I will spill my tongue and wreath you all too much in light, and all will look that much the dimmer in the day. What sorrow as seized you, Feuilly? Have you taken a leaf of my book?”

Feuilly laid a hand on Grantaire’s arm, moving slowly enough not to startle him. “Not sorrow, Grantaire, but far too many thoughts. As it is, our friends are lively enough for us both tonight.”

Now, to coax away that last bottle, as sleeping on a table was unlikely to do Grantaire’s back any good. A thought crept up upon Feuilly, and he hesitated.

“Grantaire,” he said, refusing to feel guilty for his question, as the worst Grantaire would do would be to say no and down the rest of the bottle in protest, “if you’ve finished with wine for the evening, may I ask what you intend to do with the rest?”

Grantaire’s look turned mulish and pinched, and he took a firm hold of the wine bottle as though in defense, likely anticipating a lecture. Then his wine-dark eyes sharpened, too perceptive for his prodigious intake, and he smiled again.

“Why, Feuilly!” he exclaimed, apparently delighted. “You intend to _share_ it with someone! I have rarely been given a lovelier conundrum; I surrender freely. The bottle is yours, and share it in good health.”

For all his stubborn nature and refusal to believe in anything, Feuilly liked Grantaire’s company and friendship for a reason. He accepted the wine-bottle thrust at him and smiled.

“Thank you,” he said, and meant it.

 

\--

 

The room was dark this late at night, but peaceful.

Feuilly crossed the room easily even without light, trusting his feet not to stumble.

He lit his candle, watched it warm the room with its low glow, not quite reaching every corner and crack, but so much brighter than darkness.

Leaving Grantaire’s wine on the table, Feuilly fetched two glasses and, after a moment of contemplation, a bit of bread and cheese. The candle wavered and the table made a curious little moan.

“I don’t have much to offer,” Feuilly told the haunt, pouring the wine into the glasses. The one further from him trembled, the liquid rippling and ringing with the movement. “Though I think you know that already, citizen. I’m happy to share, however, with a good housemate. I hope…”

What did he hope? What could Feuilly share with someone long gone and lingering?

The candle flame swayed and dipped, the melted wax made its way slowly downward, the wind howled and the shutters stayed shut.

“I hope you know that you’re welcome here,” Feuilly said, finally, what he had always wanted for himself when lonely and alone and aimless.

He drank his wine and ate his portion of bread and cheese, not expecting a response.

The important part had been said, after all, and when he had finished, he opened his book to read. Worn down, worked to bone by long and ceaseless work, Feuilly soon went to sleep and dreamed of nothing but aimless and untroubled dreams.

When he woke in the morning, though the wine and food sat untouched and undisturbed, the shutters were open. The light spilling in through the window, welcome and golden.

 

\--

 


End file.
